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We unmounted in an open meadow with a massive boulder in the middle of it. The rock was half-eaten by water erosion and created a majestic pillar, and it was surrounded by an almost ritualistic field of flowers that soaked up sunlight from the open sky.

I untied a tarp with the third-evolution bear meat from Sina and turned to her and then the rest. "I know we’re your responsibility, but you’re our responsibility, too. And none of us are ready to face another third ev." I chopped off a piece of the bear’s thigh with my machete and threw it to Sina. "So eat up."

I fed Kline and the lurvines, then dug a ditch that I filled with water from Water Sphere. I finished by purifying it before sitting next to Kline, creating a tiny water sphere just for him.

His eyes sparkled, and he lapped it up, letting me rub his tiny ears as the skeptical lurvines approached the water hole and drank.

Sina waited until the last moment to eat, watching me carefully till the last.

We rode on.

Things sped up after the break. Part of me thought that the soul meat would make bareback bearable, as my skin and body were sturdier.

I was wrong.

Oh, yes, I was wrong. If you’ve never had something pound at your crotch and thighs at strange and foreign angles, it’s as terrible as it is awkward to talk about. And no matter how strong your skin is, gravity and friction are stronger. It only took two hours before I moved from discomfort to chafing, and I ended up healing myself every thirty minutes.

I made Aiden drink water.

Obviously.

Sina was a lot… stranger than I imagined. I thought she simply hated me, but every time I got uncomfortable, she would move her body in a way to ease my burden or stop to let me get situated. I asked Aiden to ask about it, and he said, "When you’re uncomfortable, you flail around like a dead fish and it’s uncomfortable," with a large smile.

"What’s the real reason?"

Aiden laughed and shrugged. "I don’t know."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. That’s the cold-hard truth."

We rode on.

That night I fell asleep on Sina as she rode through the night, and in the morning, I woke to getting stung by tiny insects. I shot awake and screamed and used Pervasive Breeze to blow them away, approaching a hand-swatting job with pure violence. Then I slapped every part of my body to kill any in my shirt, created a skin barrier, created an oxygenless domain around everything but my head, and thrust two middle fingers at the bugs surrounding my barriers.

The lurvines howled with laughter.

I didn’t think it was funny. Neither did Aiden, who did not, in fact, have a skin barrier or a domain or really anything to protect himself with.

We rode on.

That afternoon, we passed over hilly sections and strange creaks that sprung up from nowhere and disappeared as fast as they came. The green in the forest shifted colors, sometimes to gray, other times brown. In one section, we were surrounded by trees webbed with pink moss and decided to stop in the forest.

Aiden didn’t trust the moss wasn’t poisonous, but I knew that it was, in fact, edible. So I shrugged and ate some.

Everyone else looked at me like a freak.

I frowned and admitted it was terrible, even noting that it wasn’t nutritious. Aiden grinned, and the lurvines smirked, and Kline rushed between them, warning them not to mock his human, but they just snorted dismissively, eating bear meat before we moved on.

Time was short, so we picked up the pace when we left, blasting through the forest at an uncomfortable speed. I wasn’t a fan, but Aiden seemed to handle it just fine, and I didn’t want to get outdone, so I kept on the road until we were both just staring at each other like it was a competition—unwilling to be the first to give up.

Turned out that he was really stubborn. He refused to harm his immune system from the water and his face contorted in pain. So I ended up giving up just to heal his wounds and then we continued still.

It was a hard ride, but it felt to… easy… easy to the point it was nerve-wracking. To deal with that, Aiden actually made small talk.

"You know… this is prime real estate," he said.

"Uh huh… Still tryin’ out the positivity thing?"

"No, I’m being serious. Thinka ’bout it. We could turn it into farmland for settlers. Let ’em do all the hard work wranglin’ up these plants and teaching the others how to survive. Then we come in with crippling taxation and bankrupt ’em. We’d then buy up the land on the cheap and sell it to… Walmart or something."

"Ooooh… So we’re a government now?"

He looked into the forest and back with a helpless smile. "It’s not like we have competition."

I giggled at the sheer absurdity of the conversation. "I don’t know what to say."

"I’m glad, ’cause me neither." He laughed and looked down and then ahead again, falling silent again. After a while, he looked over. "How am I doing? Better?"

I nodded. "Better. Anything else you wanna scheme about?"

"Nah. That took me like… Twenty minutes to think up."

I laughed. "You said the quiet part out loud."

"Oh… guess so." He looked away and then fell silent again.

It was my turn to put in effort, so I turned back to him. "So… what’re your pets names?"

He paused and then smiled wryly. "Where do you want me to start? Gotta more than a few."

"Ummm…. How about the one you love slightly less than the rest of them."

"On which day?"

I shrugged.

"Huh… well, my boa constrictor—"

"Wait! You gotta boa constrictor?"

"Uh… yeah. Obviously I don’t let ’em out on Saturd—"

"No-no-no. Back up. Are you sayin’ a boa constrictor came here with you?"

He shrugged. "They had a cage for ’em and everything. Probably doesn’t seem like it to you, but the Oracle really planned this out."

"No way…"

"Yeah. Crazy, right?"

"Yeah… so what’s his name?"

"Oh, his name’s—"

Kline suddenly hissed, and the pack stopped moving. My little warrior narrowed his eyes and then looked to the northeast.

The lurvines sniffed the air, and when they picked up the scent, Sina’s fur rose like blades of grass, and his body turned to stone.

"What is it?" I whispered to Aiden.

He put his index finger to his lips, telepathically communicated with the wolves, and turned back to me. He shook his head, placed his palms together, and separated them, moving one up.

Big…

His hands didn’t stop moving.

Huge…

My biceps flexed sporadically and my arms webbed with gooseflesh, and I listened through the deafening silence, looking through the area. The area was wide open, with thirty feet between trees, but we couldn’t see due to the steep incline before us. So we just had to wait.

A loud snap and sound of birds flitted through the forest, making my heart jolt. Then we heard the tremors in the ground and heard the snap of deadfall.

"Why aren’t we moving?" I whispered with a gasping breath.

Aiden threw up a finger. He closed his eyes, and a few seconds later, I got a message from him in my guide, showing that he had paid a silver request to communicate with me.

The message read:

-

"They said we can’t outrun ’em. The best we can do is show respect, play dead, or pray."

-

I swallowed dry saliva—the kind that scratches your throat, leaving the illusion your mouth is drier than it was before. Then it got worse. The trees swayed and buckled and snapped as twigs rained down from above the incline—

—and then I saw them.

Biblical creatures from times of old. They were giants, a hundred feet high, with moss-like fur that hung like Christmas lights, contrasting against their calcified faces that looked like masks—sad mimes of the forest, moving over the spongy terrain.

Their hands had claws and tiny thumbs and they grabbed trees to help them over boulders. They looked like giant humans but once they hit the hill, one dropped to all fours and sniffed the air with a hunched back like a wild beast. This thing wasn’t even in our league. If we had to run—

—we would die.

I identified them.

—---

Name: Torok

Description: Since I refuse to tell you the weaknesses of something that you have no chance of harming, keep still and read this instead. You have run into a torok, one of the many creatures in this forest that humbly reminds you that this forest has prevented every coordinated invasion by gods and neophytes for millions of years. So if you’re getting cocky that you beat an over-glorified fire fox—by sacrificing yourself and sending an "I’m here!" beacon to all your enemies like an idiot—I’d reconsider.

Thankfully, these third to seventh-evolution beasts only fight the strong, and your weak cores and soul force may eliminate you from that category. So, with any luck, they’ll continue on to the Bramble, waiting for legacy family members who have imported strong cores from the upper domains and have trained their whole lives for the Harvest.

That is who they are looking for. So pray that you—

—---

I suddenly stopped reading when Sina started shaking. I turned and found a torok staring right at us. Its eyes were pitch black in its white calcified mask, but I could feel them staring through me.

I tried to breathe, but no breath came, kicking off a panic attack. My ribs ached, my mind crumbled—my body refused to work.

Please no…

Suddenly, the torok turned to follow its pack but paused again, grabbing a tree and moving toward us with big steps. Kline was invisible, but I could see his soul force, and his soul force showed that he had his hackles raised, baring his fangs.

The ground quaked under its calm footsteps, releasing muted Booms and rumbles as twigs shook on the ground.

Boom… Boom… Boom…

My mind tingled from oxygen deprivation, so I took a breath, feeling nauseous and loopy.

As if to justify all my fears, it dropped to all fours, scurrying toward us. Kline jumped onto Sina and told me to get on but I didn’t move. Lithco said not to run—so I kept still.

The torok pushed its face closer until I could see its black corneas, each the size of beach balls, locked eye sockets the size of canoes. Kline hissed, and I grabbed him, holding him against my chest as the torok flipped his head right and then left, sniffing, looking right through us.

Pure… it suddenly said, using a deep baritone voice that shook my mind. Pure…

Suddenly, all the torok turned around and dropped to their fours—weaving through the trees. Kline didn’t shake; he forced his body under me and activated his ethereal form, making Sina drop down from the pressure.

The torok pack arrived in seconds, turning their heads to me and Kline and started repeating the same word in an off-sync manner.

Pure… Pure.

Pure, pure, pure, pure, pure.

Pure.

The first one suddenly reached its raft-sized palm out to grab me, and Kline ran, using Warp Step to jump between portals as the beasts screamed "Pure" in our minds with sharp intensity.

Suddenly, one bounded over Kline and another jumped past a portal that Kline flew through. He warped to another location, but a torok jumped in front of that one, too.

They can see them!

All the torok blocked the portal’s entrances, threatening to make Kline smash into a hand at high speed, so he stopped, hissing and backing up.

Pure… pure, pure… pure-pure-pure, pure.

One ducked down and stared at me. You… pure. Strength. Fight.

"I can’t fight you!" I yelled. "I’m weak!"

Pure, pure, pure… pure.

The torok cocked its head the other way. You… weak. Strength. Fight.

"I can’t!"

Suddenly, Sina howled in the distance. She was far slower than the rest of us, but she was running at full sprint as if she never hesitated. She caught up in seconds, bounding forward and jumping between us, skidding to a halt and snarling right into the torok’s face.